Sublimating Masks at Home (How To)

In the previous post I talked about the tools and what I am using to create a sublimated design on a piece of fabric. 

https://www.patreon.com/posts/dye-sublimation-47999066 

Been heavily testing how to do it on eyes and for the most part it has worked out. Still waiting on the "flag banner mesh" before I do a video comparison on how to do sublimated eyes and how they come out. For now I am going to go over on how to make your own sublimated masks at home.

First we need to either draw up a design or get a design done to print. I had a few mask designs I never got printed with the last batch of masks that I did so they were going to be perfect for this test. I can fit 2 of my designs on one dye sub paper. I am using A-sub paper for this which has been amazing. If you want to see what materials/tools I am using please look at my last post linked above. The print will come out slightly lighter, this is normal.

Prep your table. You will need butcher paper to place under the blank mask, padding to put under the butcher paper for the heat transfer (I am using one by cricut as it goes with my heater). Heat up your heat press and have a lint roller to clean up the mask (do not skip this step). Cut another piece of butcher paper to go on the top of the mask to use when heat pressing the design onto the mask.

Cut the design out. I leave a bit of white around the edges to avoid cutting into my design. Make the design bigger than the mask as you want it to bleed out a bit, this is why we have the butcher paper under the mask.

Center the design and tape down with thermal tape. This tape will not burn or melt when heat is applied. I use quite a bit to avoid the pattern moving and getting a ghosting effect.

Use your heat press and apply heat. I am using the cricut easy press 2 for this and it works but I would say it is not perfect for all over designs. You have to apply quite a bit of pressure to get it to go all over the mask. I had it at 400F for 40 seconds. Plan to bump it down to 375F for 45 seconds next time as I saw some of the masks were getting a bit over done. You can tell by seeing how dull some of the masks came out compared to the first. I wanted to get all the edges done as clean as I could but not having constant pressure created some issues. Planning on getting a regular t-shirt heat press to keep constant heat without the issue of white lines around the edges.

Once the 40 seconds are done lift up the butcher paper and tear away the sublimation paper. Take in mind it will be very hot, please use gloves when doing this if you are very sensitive to heat.

Once the paper has been torn off you can see how the ink from the paper was transferred over to the mask without an issue. The white lines around the mask were because I was applying more pressure in the middle instead of keeping it even all over the mask. As mentioned before this can be avoided with a regular heat press t-shirt machine, or doing it at a lower temp and slowly moving the pressure to the sides of the mask to get a better cover on the edges. Overall first try was a success. So you might be asking how the design  not bleed into the black, simple, dye sub ink will not dye black fabric.

The detail itself from the a-sub paper/ink is really nice. I did not expect to get results like this at home with a $200 printer. Overall I am very impressed with this technique.

These were the tests I did last night. They are all slightly different as I was testing moving things around and applying different pressure and leaving them under the heater for longer. Sweet spot is no more than 45 seconds to avoid the colors getting slightly duller.

As for the masks, if you are interested in doing dye sub yourself please get masks that are not cotton. Dye sub does not like to stick to cotton or at least it needs to be a higher polyester blend or 100% polyester. I got these mask on etsy, but there are many places online to buy blanks, just double check you can dye sub them first. Remember you can only dye sub on white or light garments not on black.

If you have any questions at all just ask :).